Bloody Childhood
by WTFWonder
Summary: Danny meets the great No Life King.
1. Order 1

"**Bloody Childhood"**

By, A Person with Time On Their Hands

Summary: Danny meets the great No Life King.

Order 1: Going, Ghost, Going, Gone

Alternate dimensions. There are countless clichés a fellow could use to describe the phenomenon and the process of birth. The butterfly effect: the slightest difference in the past rippling into the future and changing the future colossally. Layers of an onion: all the same world but separate pieces. Same story: different versions, all are true. The list goes on. Now, the grand majority of these dimensions are sequestered in seclusions with no way to leap the border into neighboring existences. These dimensions are often blessed with inhabitants that can hop through worlds as if jumping through bead curtains.

On the flipside there are dimensions with enough holes in them to be colanders.

These holes can manifest as literal soft spots in walls, rocks, the ground or even a puddle. Perhaps they're a rabbit hole at the base of a tree, or one could be made artificially by an ingenious mind. The holes could even be something as conventional as doors. In the case of our hapless protagonist, an ongoing stream of doors drifting in green, dead space. Now in our protagonist's defense, we cannot wholly blame him. He was only doing his job, chasing down a particularly nasty, homicidal witch of a specter who had nearly killed every girl in Casper High School in a bid to use their combined youth to "feed" her for the next year. Two being Sam and Valerie, and a third being Jazz.

Had this not been the case Danny might have let the demonic shrew go on her merry way, escaping into the Ghost Zone. But the incorrigible leech of a woman had sought out to murder his friends and sister not once, not twice, but three times. Third time was the charm and Danny Phantom was going to chase her down to whatever roost she called home in the Ghost Zone, blow it to pieces and--, "—rip you into pulp and feed you to Cujo! Then I'll burn his crap and _dump it out the Bermuda Triangle!_" Spectra kept a steadily rising speed as she glanced over her shoulder, red eyes narrow and insectile.

"Ooh, the scary ghost boy's making _threats_ now! I must have gotten you extra riled, hmm? Or," she smirked fit to make Vlad Masters blush, "are you just getting frustrated that you can scarcely protect the ones closest to you after all this time? It's unhealthy to go projecting your feelings of _impotence_ on others, you know." Cue lilting giggle. She was rewarded with an ecto blast the size of a monster truck tire's hubcap hurtling to her head. She just ducked in time to have it scorch off the wisps of her ethereal hair. The would-be-murderess hissed and resisted the urge to turn tail and give the punk a taste of his own medicine. She gritted her fangs and shot on, forcing a mocking smile to stay in place. The plan had come too far to blow it on a tantrum. And besides, if, _when_, she pulled it off it'd be worth dumping the supernatural brat into the Carnivorous Cavern a million times over. That and her rep in the Ghost Zone would skyrocket. Back to business now.

"I've been handing your ancient butt to you for the past two years. I'd say you're the one with issues: have you ever considered joining Dried Up Old Hags Who Demand Botox I.V.s Anonymous? Or a cat? The nutjobs with bad Dracula 'do's just love the cats." There was a thread of the halfa's usual snark in that tone and for a moment Penelope Spectra worried he might just devolve into good humor. The sudden blistering shot of cold hitting her spine spoke otherwise. Around them the ectoplasmic realm was blessedly free of distracting ghosts, with the shifting green rapidly losing its neon hue. The doors were just ahead. Spectra could have grinned her face in half. Over her shoulder she saw the ghost boy gaining on her, his eyes still emerald sunbursts in their sockets.

Just to keep the hackles raised she tossed back: "You mean Vladdie, don't you? Tall, rich, powerful fellow who's played you and your friends—well, especially _you_—like a fiddle since you first met? You know I've met him once or twice and I have to admit you two are nearly spitting images of each other. Much more than you and that fat lard who claims he's your father. If I were you I'd look into a paternity test to see if Mama Fenton didn't sleep around in her younger yee_eeeeEEOW!_" That blast had nearly taken off her arm. Now she had him hooked in so deep she doubted seeing a nun carrying a pregnant woman carrying a newborn puppy trapped in a burning building would sidetrack him. Both apparitions kicked it in to high gear and the darker ghost had to tick her eyes back and forth at hummingbird speed

The atmosphere of ectoplasm had dimmed to the darkest of jungle greens and the doors had shifted from your standard viva-bright purples and jades to more…eccentric designs. Eccentric in the sense that each new door looked progressively horrific as they flew on. This one looked like the door to a sanitarium cell, that one looked like the drawbridge to a Transylvanian castle, the next one looked like the door to the cage of some hungry Old God wanting a new mind to ravage. All were tantalizing in their promises of pain for their visitors, but she had one specially picked out for the occasion. One that was at the peak of its existence and, by its countenance, had every reason to blink into nothingness to save any passerby the temptation. Appropriately enough, it was the last door in the row.

Had it been clean it would be mistaken for any strong-bolted door to any holding cell. Simple handle, plain gently rusted steel. Oh, and there were the red stains, more than a few shaped like hands. And the various dents and scratches in the metal hide. A few things that might have been arcane symbols before age faded them to inventive squiggles. All the lengths of chain and knots of locks had been stripped away by her claws and before setting out on her "sacrifice the young maidens" gimmick she'd left it the tiniest crack open. Whether something new had escaped or entered was of little consequence so long as the door was there for the next ten seconds. Just one more barb before it came. _Just one more_. Her internal stopwatch screaming Spectra turned around 180 degrees and halted before the expiring portal. That second seemed to be awash in molasses with every feature moving in its own slow sanction of time.

Her black tail taut and twisting.

His face set in a mask of hate with his teeth bared between snarling lips.

White gloves scalding her retinas with building luminescent energy.

Violet lips curling up like wallpaper.

Violet lips opening to say, "Be sure to send a postcard dear!" The second passed and everything shot forward at once. The ghost child surged forward, blind and deaf with determination. Penelope Spectra dodged away with a millimeter to spare between her head and his blazing hands. Daniel Fenton, alias Danny Phantom, alias the bane of ghosts spanning half the Zone, blundered headfirst through the open door. Spectra was at the handle in an instant, sinuous fingers clamped around the bar like a vise. Danny Phantom cast one bewildered, realizing look at her before she pulled the door shut with a nearly orgasmic _SLAM!_

Half an instant later the door was gone.

Danny Phantom was gone.

_Gone_.

G-O-N-E, M.I.A., left the way of Jimmy Hoffa.

"Gone.", she giggled, "He's finally _gone_! I did it! _I did it and that little freak is gone!_" Shrill banshee cackles reverberated off the remaining portals and made distant offshoots of ectoplasm quiver like gelatin. The laughter subsided and her smile melted into a slim, wondering line. "He really is gone, isn't he? No one left to defend Amity Park. His little gaggle of girlfriends will never see him again or hear him laugh. His family will be just…just desolate. They might never get over the trauma. …_Ha-ha-ha-ha-HAA!_" Now she even had a free buffet waiting for her, ready and willing to patch up her wounds and stroke her ego--. "Oh. Oh, disgusting, what is this?" A thin trickle of viscous slime had trickled onto her temple and refused to stop. Then she heard the growl. She looked up to see the waiting maw of the biggest florescent green dog she'd ever seen. The tag on the collar read, _Cujo_.


	2. Order 2

Order 2: Rabbit Hole to Hell

His first thought was of his utter stupidity. She'd goaded him into a state of pure stupid rage and he'd let her. '_That's her freaking M.O., idiot. Penelope Spectra, professional depressant!_' Still how could he have thought clearly at that point? He'd just seen her about to spiritually and perhaps literally eviscerate his friends and sister. That had pissed him off and he'd thrown those threats of canine ingestion and excretion out of anger, but he could never really do it. Spectra knew that and she tossed back those acrid, acidic words anyway. It was like teasing a dog with a bone and he just kept barking after her until it was too late. '_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_'

His second thought was, _Not again._ He'd had all the time and dimension hopping he could stand with the whole Infi-Map debacle and he didn't want to play that game again. Still, if Spectra had thrown him—_You're the one who went flying in headfirst._—in this door specifically there had to be a reason. Most likely a very lethal and permanently damaging reason. In the flash of time he'd had before barreling in, he'd seen splotches and handprints of tomato juice red on the door. He doubted it was tomato juice. Whatever was on the other side of the door wasn't going to be pleasant.

His third thought was made vocal, "_Ahauwuff!_" This was the sound of pained air whooshing out of him as he landed hard on his back. "_Kuhh! _Ow…" That was the sound of him doing a backwards somersault and thwacking his skull against something hard and wooden as he came to rest on his rear. Around him there was nearly opaque darkness with the only light coming from a sparse few candles on high candlesticks. The interior of whatever room it was, was made of blocky stones in the style of castle dungeons, but the door ahead of him was the inside of the "tomato juiced" door he'd fallen through. Somehow it had closed on its own. Danny shook his head and massaged the lump growing on its back. He stood and laid a hand on whatever had tried to crack his head open like an egg. The dim light shone brightly on the varnish and framed the iconic shape of the box with proper gothic mystique. It was a coffin. A giant black coffin. Scrawled on its surface in intricate cursive was the phrase: _The Bird of Hermes is my name. Eating my wings to make me tame._

To him it sounded like a hokey lyric from one of those pseudo-Goth metal bands Sam liked so much. Looking around he saw no monsters, ghosts, demented lunch ladies or killer plants. There was an ornate high-backed chair and a small table sporting a bottle of red wine though. Whoever or whatever rested here was apparently out to lunch—whoever or whatever lunch was. Danny snickered weakly, "Heh, Spectra goes through all that trouble and the monster of the house isn't even in."

"_Don't touch my coffin._" The candlelight flickered at the sound and Danny yanked his hand away from the coffin as if it were a hot stove. "_Get away from my coffin, poltergeist._" The voice was a rolling baritone that radiated from every crack in the stone, making the candlelight give a last stuttering flash before snuffing. The only light now was his frail ghostly aura. He lit up both fists, searching for the owner of the voice. He took two obliging steps away from the coffin in what he hoped was the direction of the door. The resident of the room didn't sound particularly hostile at least, just touchy about his property. Danny cleared his throat.

"Okay. Okay, I-I apologize for bursting, uh," he was stuttering, when was the last time he'd stuttered in the face (?) of another spook?, "bursting in like that. Not my choice. I'll just leave and be out of your hair, okay?" '_Or whatever you have on your head._' The voice chuckled and Danny felt an otherworldly chill twine around his spine like a frozen string. Ooh, he didn't like that laugh. He'd rather listen to Plasmius' pompous cackling on a loop than hear that thing's laugh again.

"Daft one aren't you, poltergeist?" The hostility had ebbed away but that didn't soothe Danny an iota. It felt as if he wasn't just being watched, but being watched from every angle. His skin felt too tight, too cold, too infested with alien worms of unease. He took two more rapid steps to the door, or what he prayed was the door, and felt the first one. A giant silken glove decorated with gibberish symbols had clamped onto his shoulder. He flinched under the grip and whirled to fire an ecto blast. The green flash flew and struck black nothing. The voice crowed giddily. "Awfully jumpy for a ghost, aren't you? Awfully…bizarre for a ghost too." Danny made a very unheroic noise when another hand latched onto his opposite arm. "Never met one fashioned after some ridiculous comic book character, nor any that were so solid. I wonder…"

Danny felt wet breath on the back of his neck and felt his shifting innards freeze when an ocean of disembodied red eyes opened around him. "…do you _bleed_, phantom?" He felt the pinprick sensation of fangs piercing the fabric of his collar. That broke the paralysis like a set of hot needles sticking him. Finally his battle sense caught up with the rest of him and he ripped himself out of the gloves' hold. He turned to see a grotesque maw in the blackness, with so many dagger teeth behind its unseen lips that it might have belonged to the world's biggest leech. If the near bite out of his throat was any indication, he guess wasn't far off. The leech mouth was grinning madly at him, every ruby eye crinkled up in mimics of smiles.

'_Somehow, I miss the angry voice._' "Look, I don't want to fight, I just want to leave! Just let me out of here and I'll even chuck a bottle of coffin varnish in here if I pass by again, alright?" Again with the tickled laughter. He sounded like a possessed child enjoying the built in phrases of a new action figure.

"I can't recall the last time the Hellsing Manor has been invaded—in fact I think the last attempt was by a cat burglar trying to make off with some heirlooms and I swallowed the squalling fool him in two bites—but never has an intruder been so clueless, let alone another apparition. I'd gladly let you on your way," his voice indicated anything but and Danny was certain the creature was planning to slice a _Property Of_ signature in his skull, "but I am bound to protect my Master and your presence certainly puts her safety in peril."

"Or maybe you're just a sadist who wants a chew toy."

"Not at all. You can't want what you already have and you, phantom, aren't going _anywhere_." Claustrophobia closed around him like a fog, the red eyes leaning in with new mouths and hands fading into view. There was no way to the door now and he wasn't about to backpedal into any of the floating bodily features. There was no way out. Even intangibility seemed like a far shot in this nightmare room. What was the point of walking through walls if the walls could catch you?

'_Wait. Up. Over my head there aren't any--._' The "ceiling" was relatively clear of staring eyes and hungry teeth and hands. He flared with green light and rocketed up as hard and fast as he could. Fingers and fangs grazed his suit like branches in a thicket with one mouth nearly taking off his ear. He hit the inky ceiling like a missile and for a horrible second the tension was too great. But sheer force and intangibility shoved him up and out. Danny Phantom cheered in his head but kept flying. As he darted through different floors he saw that the place had quite the intricate basement. He passed through rooms of torture equipment, modern artillery, two archives and even a floor filled with rather shocked soldiers. After this the floors looked more like what one would see in your average mansion—exquisite dining room, hall of family portraits with a monocled butler dropping his tray of tea in surprise and an extravagant study.

Then there was sky.

He was above the monster of a mansion, its evergreen landscape wide and smooth below him. The sky was a dusky red-orange with the sun setting in a slit on the horizon. From the (relatively) regular atmosphere Danny assumed the door had merely led him to a different time period, not a pocket of the Ghost Zone. That much was good. '_Don't know what I'd do if this place was polluted with more than one of that…guy_.' Speak of the devil a second chill ran up from the soles of his feet and coiled in a nauseous point at his gut. He cast green eyes down to see the roof of "Hellsing Manor" staining itself black. A pair of giant red eyes peered up from it. "See! Not an intruder! I'll be going now!" The red eyes slanted with malevolent glee as the black leaked over the edges of the roof and began to lift up towards him. '_And that's my cue to run like a little girl._'

He turned invisible and soared as quietly as he could towards the city lights he saw in the distance. Wherever and whenever this place was Danny was sure the creature wouldn't make the chase public—if it did Sam would have given him a history lesson on the event long ago. Checking for any floating facial features in the darkening night sky Danny kept his other eye on the running landscape below him. He was flying over what was likely the upper class "peace and quiet in the country" homes with hills of blank green and swatches of forest coming at intervals with a single snake of asphalt cutting through it all. He followed that gray snake into the city, the tiny lights twinkling like stars planted in the ground.

Staying transparent all the way to the ground he ducked into the shade of an apartment building, '_No eyes, no mouths, no hands, we're good._', and became Danny Fenton in a flash of white rings. He turned onto the sidewalk immediately and began walking with his head down, his lips rambling his thoughts out in whispers. "Okay. Okay, you're fine. Just need to get back to that door before it blinks out in the Ghost Zone." '_Provided it hasn't already._' "Have to get past Chuckles first. How do I do that? Go invisible? Talk with whoever his master is? Maybe use a doppelganger to distract him or something. _Oof!_" Danny stumbled back a step to see a rosy-faced girl and boy leaning on each other. She was wearing a mimic of Madonna-wear from _Like a Virgin_ days and he was wearing a muscle shirt with sunglasses pushed over his feathered hair.

"Oh! Sorry 'bout that love, weren't looking where we was goin'.", she giggled and a sheaf of spray-choked hair covered one eye.

"We was lookin' alright, we're just too mashed to care, you nutty bird. Still right sorry, friend. Y'want a fag for your trouble? The lady's trying t'get me t'quit anyway."

'_A _what_ for my trouble!?_' "Say again?" Both pairs of brows shot up in surprise at his voice before they fell into giggles.

"Th-The blighter's American! Ha-ha!", the girl tittered.

"Liz, don't you know what 'fag' means to 'im? D'you know what I just said to 'im!?", he asked in hysteria.

"What, what?" Danny plastered a hand to his forehead as the boy bent down and whispered the meaning into Liz's ear. The halfa was over this awkward moment as of a year ago and just wanted to get out of there. "Aha-ha-haa! Oh love, don't you worry, Cliff 'ere's all for the twat, I should know. Ha-ha!"

"Fag's just a, y'know, a cigarette in these parts, Yankee. Still want one?" Danny watched as Cliff dug out a carton of cigarettes and offered him the white tube poking from its top. Did the concept of _underage_ just not occur to them or was their drunkenness just a great buffer? Danny pushed the pack away and began to edge around the lush couple.

"Nnno thanks. Have fun in the morning." Before they could guffaw something else at him he went off in a sprint only stopping when he saw the iconic glowing clock face rising above the buildings. Big Ben. He looked into a display case to his right and saw it chocked with shiny new VCRs and cassette players in the window. He was in London, England. London, England of _the eighties_. Déjà vu whacked him over the head and he pondered reverting to his Danny Phantom costume so he wouldn't stick out in his fashion-disaster jeans and t-shirt. Then again, big, black and bitey would be looking for him as a ghost so… '_I think I'll risk the fashion snafu._' His hands fondled the cell and mp3 in his pocket, wondered lightly if the former would still work and how long the battery of the latter would last.

Didn't matter. "Best bet is a doppelganger.", he nodded to himself. He couldn't pin down just how long he'd been in the Euro 80's but he was sure he was just a few minutes shy of his Roman battle with Plasmius. He should still be safe, right? "Right."

"Wrong." At this point Danny Fenton might as well have a skeleton made of ice for all the chills he'd gotten. The word had shot directly into his ear. In the window display's reflection he saw the phantom image of those same slit red eyes and fang-filled grin.

'_Oh no. Oh please no, I was that close!_', he thought frantically as he backpedaled. The familiar tingle of transformation built in his middle before it was swiftly squelched by a silken hand gripping his side. He looked down to see a long multi-jointed arm jutting out of his own shadow that was now peppered with the eyes. "_Whaahah--!_" Before he could get out a full yell and army of gloved hands sprouted up and seized his limbs. Another wrapped around his neck like a collar and another plastered itself over his mouth. He was pulled into the splotch of shadow quick as he could fall under water. The constable passing around the corner didn't even have time to see the boy's gawking baby blues vanishing into the sidewalk.

What came next could only be described by the abductee as an acid trip designed and produced by a Tim Burton and Marilyn Manson dream team. There were the expected drifting eyes and mouths of course, the background of obsidian with stray dashes of flaring red. There were people too. At least, things that might have been people at some happier time in their lives. The people were horrid, transmuting monstrosities that melded into each other all of them moaning and laughing by turns. Some wore the fitted coats and spats of the twenties while others wore fatigues and still others wore chainmail and steel helmets. They were eyeless. The sockets where they might have been only oozed dark ichor along with any other orifice they had.

He didn't realize he'd stopped breathing until he blinked and was back in the study he'd flown through during his now-botched escape. He gasped like a fish dropped in the Sahara, not noticing the other occupants or his own position until his lungs were full. "Told you, Integra. Apparently he's part human as well—half dead as it were. Ha ha." Danny realized he was being held above the polished floor and hanging like a mannequin in the crook of his abductor's arm. He looked up to see the demon's face and despite the surreality of the whole thing, his first thought was:

'_Like. Red. Much?_' Red trenchcoat, red tie, enormous red fedora, red sunglasses with a simple black suit and a handsome, manic face under it all.

"Alucard, are you quite sure this lad is the ghost?" Danny craned his head up to see the monocled butler standing beside a huge oak desk, "I don't recall the spirit who shot past me in the hall being so very, well…" He spun his hand lightly, trying to hook the right word.

"Blatantly human and scared out of his wits?"

"Not counting the last bit, yes Sir Integra." The halfa glanced to the butler's left to see the person sitting behind the desk. A gorgeous tanned girl in glasses, her long platinum hair hanging around her face in a curtain. Her steely blue eyes were scrutinizing him and the lunatic holding him carefully, deciding who she was going to verbally castrate.

"This is the same specter, you doubters. He's a shapeshifter is all." The boy went rigid as the grip on him tightened. "Never seen anything like it." He didn't have time for this.

"And I doubt you will again. See ya'!" With that he went intangible and dropped through the monster's arm much to Sir Integra's and the butler's surprise, Alucard merely throwing an 'I told you so' to the pair. Danny dropped through the floor and went ghost sans battle cry on the way. "Please, please, please, _please_.", he begged whoever might be listening as he fired his way through the levels, searching for the door. He went through three layers of basement until he found a dungeonesque hall made of the same stone as Alucard's coffin room. He flew down this hall at top speed and hit the brakes when he saw the telltale stains and scratches. His face split in a frenzied smile. He glued his hand to the handle and pulled.

It only opened on the coffin room.

"What-? No. No, it's okay it probably just…" '_It probably has to open from the other side._' He darted inside, closed the door and reopened it.

He saw the hallway.

'_No. No. No. NO._' Danny Phantom shut and opened the door six more times. He opened it to see that same stupid hallway and the handle shrunk in the shape of his fingers. He screamed through gritted teeth, pulled the door back as far as it would go and slammed it. The sound of metal ramming into the frame rang like cannon fire and bounced off the walls of the room jaggedly. The stone around the frame cracked.

"Have your spandex in a twist, do you?" For one wild moment he superimposed Vlad's voice over the monster's baritone. Jazz—God, would he ever see her again now? Ever see anyone again?—would have some big psychobabble term for it, trying to project familiar things onto an unfamiliar territory. But it was Alucard, thankfully in his crimson ensemble and not wielding any extra body parts or shadows. He was looming over the halfa where the door had been, arms crossed and head bowed so that he could look over his shades and down his nose at the boy. Danny didn't look up.

'_Why should I?_' He didn't blink when Alucard planted one shackle of a hand around his upper arm. The taller man (?) was still grinning.

"Be sure to tell me all about your traumatic door-related ordeal after we all have a powwow upstairs, hmm?" Danny didn't answer, just stared at the floor with thoughts dancing in the windows of his eyes. Alucard pulled him through the shadows—Danny kept his eyes shut this time—and they reappeared in the study for the third time. "Once again: _told you so_."

"Yes, yes, we believe you Alucard. If I may ask, what exactly did you show him to make him so docile?" That was the butler talking. He reminded Danny of a fitter version of Hobson.

"Nothing. He must have had some sort of epiphany while he was demolishing my bedroom door. Speaking of which," his hand squeezed painfully into the halfa's arm, "would you care to explain that along with why you saw fit to visit our happy home?"

"…Was trying to leave, I told you. Now it's too late. Too late and the door's gone…" His green eyes never left the floor. '_There has to be another way out. There's always another way out. Isn't that a rule with we superhero types? There _has_ to be another way out. Clockwork maybe? Could I find my parents at college?_' He failed to notice the concentrating ruby stare on the back of his head.

The girl, Sir Integra, got up from her plush chair and walked around the desk to stand a foot from the ghost boy. The butler tensed and the scribbles atop Alucard's gloves flashed red. "What is your name? How did you…come to be?" He lifted his eyes momentarily, only a sliver of his mind in the moment as he spoke.

"Danny. Danny Phantom like this." He transformed without batting an eye, looking sallower as a human than he did when dead. "Danny Fenton like this. As for how I came to be it's a truly epic story—Stan Lee should've used me instead of Spiderman. Heh." Integra raised her blonde brows and her lips grew tighter.

"Fascinating. What I mean to ask is, what are you doing in my mansion?" Danny looked her in the eye dryly and ping-ponged his gaze to her entourage of two.

"Do you people just not listen? I didn't mean to come here. It was a complete fluke courtesy of another ghost. I never aimed for London, or Bela Lugosi's suite, or the nineteen freaking eighties. I just need to get home!", he burst on the last word and his bone strained unhappily in Alucard's grip. '_Home. Home. I need to get to Mom and Dad's college or Amity Park or aim for the Bermuda Triangle or—or _some_thing…_'

"Amity Park?" Danny jolted at the word and looked up at Alucard's shades. The grin had died in the wake of a considering line. "You're from Amity Park, in the United States?"

"Y-Yeah! Did you catch all of my story or--?" Alucard shook his head. All the insane jubilance had fallen from his face and his stoplight eyes were at least a shred more somber. Integra and the butler were exchanging glances now and wondering what the supernatural pair was on about.

"I just want to save you the trouble. There is no such place as Amity Park, California. Likewise I have once visited the Bermuda Triangle and found nothing even resembling you or this Ghost Zone you recall." He was lying. That was the only explanation. He could buy a guy like him taking a vacation to the Bermuda Triangle for the heck of it, but why would he know anything about Amity Park? "I know because anything pertaining to Amityville has long since been researched and a city bearing the same name would have been in our archives for at least a decade. Am I right Walter?"

Danny looked to the increasingly worrisome butler. The man's cracked face scrunched into a fretting expression. "Ah, yes, I recall collecting the files on that incident after I visited the States. Unless that city was built overnight, there is no such place as Amity Park." All at once Daniel Fenton's mind was blanketed in a dense numbness. The vibrancy ran out of everything and Integra's words were wrapped in gauze. He barely felt the relief of Alucard releasing his arm where a hand-shaped bruise would grow. Everything was pulled a million miles away and nothing short of Clockwork popping in to deus ex machina him out of there would bring him back to attention.

"Hello? Mr. Fenton, can you hear me?"

"…What?"

"Would you care to explain what led to all of this or do you," her body language shifted oddly as if caught between trying to be empathetic and cold at the same time, "need a minute?"

'_Or a couple hours of screaming. That would be dandy._' "Yeah a minute. Just a minute to…to…I'll be in the sky if you need me." He transformed again and drifted up through the ceiling. All three occupants of the study watched him disappear up to the tips of his white boots.

Integra quirked her brows together and felt the itch for a nice cigar. "Alucard."

"Yes Master?"

"Tell me you read his mind and can spare the boy explaining it to us." He shrugged his broad shoulders and slipped his sunglasses off.

"Not everything but I got far enough to know he was telling the truth about it being unintended. He was tricked into crashing into our dimension by an enemy. The entrance was fashioned after my own bedroom door and it seems that these extradimensional doors have quick expiration dates as soon as anyone enters them. Long story short, he's lost his rabbit hole out of Wonderland and he's battling a meltdown somewhere in the stratosphere." The itch for a cigar turned into an all-consuming rash in Integra's mind.

"Well this is certainly…unanticipated. When he comes back down someone needs to be ready to talk to him." Throwing in the towel she stalked back to her desk, retrieved a single cigar from her drawer and lit it gratefully. Instantly the smirk was back on the vampire.

"I'd be delighted to have a heart to heart with--."

"Walter, you'll be having a heart to heart with him when he returns."

"Very good Sir.", Walter replied with warm curtness. He walked out past Alucard with a ghost of a smirk on his old lips. "Will you want your blood packs early tonight, Alucard?" Alucard turned up his chin and crossed his arms in a pout.

"Yes. And I want O positive."

"I'll leave it by your wine." With that he was out of the study and down the hall. This left the Midian and his master to themselves. Sir Integra Hellsing sat in her chair, inhaling her cigar and pretending to read over some of her newest documents. Alucard sauntered forward to pause at the girl's side. She lasted seven seconds.

"What?"

"What do you make of him?"

"What does it matter to you?"

"Just curious."

"…"

"…"

"…Right. Outside of the crippling breakdown he seemed nice enough for a hybrid of life and death. An American one at that." She blew out a string of smoke. "Sarcasm aside, I can't really know yet. People are always different when they're under stress. I'll wait until he calms down before I call judgment. What do you think of him?"

If she hadn't known the Nosferatu better Integra would have been disturbed by the sinister sheen in his stare and the baring of his fangs. She tapped some ash into the trashcan. He faded from view with one word hanging in the air: "Promising."

Up over the clouds Danny Phantom was trying miserably to sort the screeching mess that was his mind into order. At last he decided to just shove it all through a mental funnel. "Amity Park doesn't exist." '_I'm stuck._' "If Amity Park doesn't exist, this can't be the same dimension, let alone the same time period." '_I'm stuck_.' "If this isn't even an offshoot of the same dimension, Clockwork doesn't exist here." '_I'm STUCK_.' "And if Clockwork doesn't exist here," '_I'M STUCK!_' He was stuck. Stranded. Marooned. Cast away indefinitely in a world where iPods were alien, to say nothing of CDs, and everyone talked like people out of Monty Python.

Irrevocably planted in a world without his family or friends. Oh God, what would they think when he didn't show up for dinner or school? When every ghost and their grandmother realized he was permanently M.I.A. and went on a haunting spree? Valerie could help and so could his parents and the Guys in White if they were competent enough. But ego aside he knew he was the main factor in foiling whatever scheme the apparitions hatched. Finally having him gone would be like early Christmas to them and Danny shuddered to think how they would celebrate. '_How _Vlad_ will celebrate._' He could hear a number of cracks happening in his mind at that thought. He thought of Vlad trying to "console" his mother and her being to grief-stricken to notice the hand on her hip. He thought of his parents tearfully going berserk on every ghost they could find, always believing the next ghost would be his abductor. He thought of Skulker wanting a new quarry and switching to Valerie for sport. He thought of Tucker, Sam and Jazz sitting in the cafeteria imagining him sitting across from the Goth as he always had. He thought of his family taking turns sitting in his room.

He thought of the faux funeral that would eventually be held at Amity Park Cemetery where Vlad would no doubt have the audacity to read his eulogy in front of a dozen news cameras.

Danny howled and fired a wrecking ball-starburst of green at the stars. It felt better. He clenched his teeth until they ground into powder, throwing darts of energy and shots of concentrated cold into the sky at whatever voyeuristic aliens might be watching. He kept firing until the boiling meltdown had simmered down to a hollow bathwater temperature instead. Just before he lost his mental heat he took in one titanic breath and yowled. He had to struggle not to turn it into a ghostly wail, his voice breaking the clouds on its own. The scream lasted for what felt like an hour and when he finished his throat was a raw tube. A silent minute passed. Danny Phantom, ex-protector of Amity Park, dropped down to Hellsing Manor's roof and stood. At last, the long awaited and longer dreaded question came, "What do I do now?" In perfect truth, what _could_ he do now?

Get adopted somewhere in 80's London and fight crime? Join up with whatever supernatural forces there were here? Fly to the U.S.? Take a permanent vacation to Euro Disneyland—or was that built yet? Danny sat on the ledge of the roof and looked up at the blank, starry space where he'd floated a second ago. "What am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to be in the library."

"_Gyegh!_" Alucard had manifested to crouch at his side and Danny didn't want to think of how long he'd been there. "Do you have to do that?" He smirked at the boy and cracked his knuckles.

"You already knew I was here, you were just too wrapped up in your monologue to notice. Walter is waiting for you in the library."

"Who?"

"The man with the monocle.", he flashed his fangs in a broader smile, "I can take you there if you'd like."

"Yeah, I think I'll settle for directions."

"Scaredy cat. It's the room to the right of my Master's office."

"Thanks." Before Alucard could change his mind for him Danny vanished through the roof and floated through the insulation. He poked his head out of the ceiling to see Walter sitting patiently in a wingback chair amidst three colossal walls of books. In the man's hand was a thick book entitled _Genus of Souls_.

Without lifting his head he called politely, "Hello, Mr. Fenton. Would you care to sit down?" Danny slumped out of the ceiling and landed in the wingback chair opposite the butler before shifting back to human form. Walter closed his book and set it on the table between them which also featured a tray of tea, water and various little foods. "Would you like anything?"

'_To be sitting in my room reading the details about the Hartman rocket for the hundredth time and still getting geeked over it._' "I'm fine." '_Ha!_' Walter nodded serenely and folded his hands on his knee.

"I don't believe we've been formally introduced." He reached a gloved hand across the gap between them. "I am Walter C. Dornez, head butler and retainer for the Hellsing Organization." Danny shook his hand numbly with an equally vapid smile to match.

"Danny Fenton, part time exorcist and ex-protector of Amity Park." '_There's that ex again._'

"A pleasure sir. If you'll forgive the intrusion Sir Integra and I learned a bit more from Alucard after he took a walk in your head. As he put it you are distressed that your 'rabbit hole out of Wonderland' has vanished." Danny snorted humorlessly.

"If you want the condensed version, yeah, I am a little ticked after being screwed by the white rabbit." '_If I ever get back I think I really will feed her to Cujo._' Walter frowned at the boy's thin smile and continued gently.

"Again I apologize for the imposition. I doubt it would be fair to demand your life story without giving a bit of explanation about the Hellsing Organization itself. As you may have noticed from Alucard we are also in the paranormal field, doing what I assume you do,"

'_Did, he means did._'

"in your hometown which is to exterminate ghouls and monsters with habits of terrorizing the public." Danny nodded. "He have existed for centuries, starting with the original Abraham Hellsing of _Dracula_ lore. Ever since that man's founding of the Organization, two things have been kept a constant. Hellsing always remains a staple in defending the Church and monarch of England and we have had the same top soldier since Hellsing's foundation: Alucard."

'_Might have guessed._' "So tall, dark, and gruesome is a good guy, right?"

"And a vampire."

"Never seen a vampire leak dark matter, extra eyes and hands."

"Just as we've never seen a ghost that can stay solid and revert to human form. Takes all kinds, and all that. In any case, the Hellsing bloodline, Alucard and our secret soldiers—those were the lads in uniform you startled on your way out—have been protecting England for ages and we will never stop. Sir Integra will tell you the same."

"I meant to ask," '_No I didn't._', "why do you call her 'Sir' Integra?"

Walter smiled proudly, "Because Sir Integra Hellsing is a Knight of the modern Round Table. But she'll gladly explain that to you in her own time. Is there anything else you wish to know?"

'_CAN YOU GET ME HOME?_' "What year is it?"

"1988."

"Oh good, so we're on the brink of the nineties at least. That's something."

"What year was it in your world?"

"2008. Tape cassettes, VCRs and most of today's celebrities' careers were dead, everyone had cellphones that didn't give you cancer and most of the teens from that generation will go deaf early because of these." He dug out his mp3 and dangled it for demonstration before re-pocketing it.

"What on Earth was that?"

"It's what'll replace CDs in the future. You'll buy music online instead of buying a whole disc for two songs. Gonna' be great." '_Don't you dare get choked up now. Don't you dare._' Danny cleared his throat and settled deeper into the leather of the chair, his hands hanging like dead spiders in his lap. "But the technology for ghost hunters and the government was eons ahead of what the public had. It was because of something my parents made that I'm like," he held up a hand and turned it invisible, "this. The Fenton Ghost Portal." Over a course of two hours and half in which the tea on the tray went cold and the ice water went tepid Danny Fenton retold his life to the old man.

His "birth" in the portal. His first transformation. The ghosts, the fights, the enemies. His friends and conflicts with the family. Almost everything up until Spectra's trap. "—and after Alucard started playing the I'm Going To Horrify You Until It Stops Being Funny card, I flew out of there and you know the rest. I think I'll have that water now." He drank half the pitcher and it soothed his vocal cords. At the rate the night was going he'd lose his voice soon.

"That's quite a story, Mr. Fenton."

"Just Danny, please."

"Of course. All these battles you've fought—what is it you can do?"

"Well there's the standard stuff outside of transforming. Going invisible, walking through walls, flight and possession. Then there's this," his hand lit up the emerald power and he twiddled his fingers in it, "I call it ecto energy for lack of a better name and it's basically an all purpose weapon. Quick blasts, lasers, electrocution, and a scream that can demolish a city." He snuffed the green light out and replaced it with a shell of ice. "There's also the mandatory super strength, speed and durability shtick."

"Goodness, that sounds like quite a powerful combination. I shudder to think what your enemies were like." Danny smirked emptily.

"Oh, they were all great on the holidays. They even sent me presents on Christmas before trying to skin me after New Year's." Walter leaned back in the chair and his gray eyes widened in surprise.

"Remarkable. The most kindness we receive from our enemies is ill-tasted gag gifts from the Vatican at Christmas."

'_The Vatican?_' "The Vatican sends gag gifts?" The butler smiled wryly and brushed something from his monocle.

"That's the cleanest thing we can call sending a devoutly Protestant organization a bottle of wine blessed by a Catholic priest. But then, Sir Integra insists on sending them the reverse in retaliation. I'm hoping both sides simply grow bored of it. Mr. Fenton?" The boy was snickering to himself.

"It's Danny and I'm s-sorry, I was just remembering my last Christmas when I could do nothing but hate the holiday, because of my parents' yearly shouting match. This guy named Ghostwriter went evil Dr. Seuss on me and turned everything anybody said into a Christmas rhyme because I ruined one of his books."

"_What?_"

"That's what I would have said too, but he'd have turned it into a rhyme. I go through the entire night trying to figure out how to stop this guy and it turns out my sworn enemies, up to and including the one who tossed me in here, have a Christmas truce. Guess how we beat him." By now Mr. Dornez was wondering if the young man had somehow found the larder's alcohol stock.

"I daren't ask."

Danny smirked, "With an _orange_. He has reality at his fingertips, has every ghost and their grandma fighting each other, and it goes to pieces because I picked up an orange. It screwed up his poem because--."

"Because nothing rhymes with orange. If you'll forgive my saying, your world sounds like something out of one of those children's comic books."

"Yeah, Alucard razzed me on that too. And it was pretty comic bookish; sometimes I'd just be waiting for some cheesy sound effect to pop out of nowhere when I punched someone. You know, _biff, ka-pow, _and _zammo_. But it grew on me." Danny's feeble grin withered into a sad tear under his nose and he slouched. "I can't imagine never going back." '_Never going home._' Walter C. Dornez had trouble keeping his own polite smile in place and he'd managed to beam through Integra Hellsing's first indignant rant about snogging and all its stupidity when some imbecile son of one of the Knight's tried to tongue her. However, not one thing in his decades of service at Hellsing had prepared him for this situation. After all he specialized in tending his master, annihilating the paranormal and serving tea. He'd never had to face a dimensionally displaced, half dead lad from twenty years in an alternate future. It simply wasn't in the Hellsing Organization's handbook.

And oh dear, were the boy's eyes going glassy? Danny realized this too and pretended to massage the bridge of his nose while wiping two incriminating dots of wetness away. "If…," oh, what to say, what to say, "If it is any consolation Mr. Fenton, if your life has been half as fantastic as you say, surely some deus ex machina will provide a way back. It's only been a few hours since your arrival, after all." The watery smile was back but at least the teen's eyes were dryer—and pinker. He snorted a lackluster laugh.

"That's what I've been telling myself ever since I realized the door was gone—sorry, about cracking the stone by the way." Walter brushed this off with his hand.

"Think nothing of it, Alucard was bound to do it himself eventually."

"I really do feel like I'm just waiting for Clockwork to show up, or for me to open my eyes and still be in my own bed, or something. I'm just used to having some cure-all of the moment, using it and, poof, everything's back to normal so I can go home with some hammy moral or other. And, sorry to say this, but this place…" Danny held up his hands either to indicate the library or the world at large, before lowering them defeatedly, "…this place feels like the exact opposite. I don't know if it was the giant, demented black sea of disembodied mouths and eyeballs that turned me off, but this world feels darker than mine." No. No, darker wasn't the word he wanted. Grimmer?

"The word you're looking for is _bloodier_." Alucard's voice leaked from every crevice in the room and Walter sighed irately. Danny felt his stomach clench to the size of a peach pit in him and he somehow knew to look to his left. Sure enough the big red bogeyman phased through the bookcase, everything from Oscar Wilde to _Exorcism for Dummies_ vanishing behind his trenchcoat. "I'd imagine the term's quite foreign to you coming from a life untouched by homicide." Suddenly Mr. Dornez was standing, his old, practiced arms straining not to cross huffily over his chest.

"Alucard, I recall Sir Integra ordering we be left alone." The vampire bared his fangs in an innocent smile.

"Really? All I heard was that you were to have a heart-to-heart with the phantom. Didn't catch a word about it being exclusive."

"What is it you need to say, Alucard?" Danny looked between the two men and wondered if he'd accidentally turned invisible.

"I merely want to apologize for jumping to conclusions when we first met."

"I didn't realize 'conclusions' was slang for 'throat' in London.", Danny deadpanned.

"Throat..? I fail to recall you mentioning that in your little recap, Alucard." The vampire shrugged and tilted the brim of his hat down, smirk threatening to slash his cheeks.

"I guess my memory's just going at my ripe old age. And in any case, I _do_ apologize." Red eyes locked with blue.

_For not making it last longer._

Every hair on Danny's body from the nape down stood on end at the echo in his mind. It was like having a snake hatch in his head and slithering against the inside of his skull. "Sure. Honest mistake." Danny got up himself and angled his feet for the door. "I appreciate you clearing things up for me. And again, sorry for freaking anyone out, but I think I'm gonna' collapse soon. Do you know where a good hotel is?" '_I can probably crash in one of the vacant rooms if my cash doesn't fly here._' Walter opened his mouth and was drowned out by the creaking of the library's door. The butler stood at attention and the vampire looked enormously smug about something unfathomable.

"Oh drop the pleasantries, will you?" Standing in the doorway was Sir Integra Hellsing, face set and arms crossed. "We're not about to send someone in your situation out there to do know God knows what; let alone someone who knows about the purpose and layout of Hellsing. You'll be staying in one of the guest rooms—Lord knows we need a reason to have them—or if you're feeling adventurous, you can tough it out in one of the basement cells next door to Alucard's. Either way you're staying here for at least this night. Are we clear?"

'_Why isn't she wearing fatigues?_' "Yes." Integra nodded curtly and turned her scalding blue eyes on the butler.

"Walter, would you point out one of the guest rooms to Mr. Fenton." There was a faint murmur of 'it's just Danny' whispering from somewhere easily ignored.

"Right away ma'am. If you'll follow me, Mr. Fenton?"

'_Danny. Just. Danny._' "Sure, thanks." He trailed after the butler and almost didn't realize Integra was at his side until they were at the guest room's door. She hadn't said a word in their walk down the hall, just keeping her eyes slanted and unblinking with squared shoulders. It was almost as if she were automated. Dornez opened the door on a lavish bedroom that could easily hold a third of Fenton Works. It had one window that nearly made up a wall, a bed that could fit ten of him, a desk, dresser and closet and an open door he could see a shower stall through. There was even a Persian carpet. The jaded, emotionally drained part of him couldn't care if he was sleeping in the Lincoln Suite or a broom closet. The wit that refused to shut itself up however: '_Please tell me I don't have to pay for the night._' "Wow. I could fit most of my house in here. Thanks for letting me stay here."

"Mmm. Walter, could you leave us for a moment?" The butler padded silently away and left the adolescents to themselves. Integra took off her glasses wiped a nonexistent smudge from a lens and replaced them. "I don't know everything that Walter told you but I do know that we've not been properly introduced."

'_I'm detecting a theme here._' He took her hand when it was offered and noticed it was a good deal tighter than Walter's had been.

"I am Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing and I am the head of this manor and the Hellsing Organization."

"Danny Fenton or Phantom depending on the hair color, and before a recent dimensional roadtrip I was the defender of Amity Park against various ghosts and monsters on steroids." Integra's iron grip dropped away for both her hands to hang in fists.

"I'd like to truly apologize for Alucard's actions. He is my Servant and as his Master I take full responsibility. That git of a vampire rarely gets much sport as far as hunting the supernatural goes, let alone someone of your…", here she floundered a moment and Danny caught the flicker of softness in her eyes befitting her age before it blinked away, "condition, so when you stumbled in on him he got a little--."

"Hungry? Spastic? Psychotic?"

"Excited.", Integra sighed, "He's yet to admit how many centuries old he is, and yet he behaves like a child searching for the biggest bugs to squash. So again, I apologize. You may stay here for as long as it's necessary." With that done the military officer in a teen model's body waltzed back to the door and paused with her hand on the doorknob. "Provided you don't vanish back home before morning, you should know the cooks serve breakfast at seven for the day shift and ten for the night. Walter or myself will introduce you to the troops—they're edgy enough with just Alucard about so I think it's best that--."

"That they know I'm not about to go Linda Blair on them." Danny could have sworn the girl cracked a smile.

"More or less. Sleep well, Mr. Fenton."

"Danny. 'Night," '_Do I say Integra? Sir?_' "Miss Integra." She raised a platinum brow at this before closing the door behind him. Danny passed sigh out his nose and craned his head around the acre of a room. None of his posters. No schematics of the Hartman rocket. The dresser was bare of a stereo and his CDs, his temperamental alarm clock replaced by a black rectangle with a digital readout and his stack of comic books was missing. The Persian rug was free of scattered clothes, bits of food and half-concealed anti-ghost weaponry. On the window-wall there were long dark curtains that might be velvet, no blinds with the string that always got stuck. The massive bed was made and pressed in a state of near-permanent disuse without a Fenton Thermos tucked under the pillows.

He slipped one hand into his pocket and pulled out the only two relics of the future he had. His cellphone, full of numbers he couldn't dial. His mp3, stocked with music from before and far beyond this year. He ran his thumb over both of their shells and walked to the bedside. They both went under his pillow for safekeeping. He sat on the very edge of the bed, taking in the alien swirls and designs of the rug and when those grew dull he examined his hands. His mind began to tilt away from sleep and into the dangerous thoughts he'd had in the sky. He then fell back on the safety net of any teenager not wanting to face work, reality, or any version of "the music"—he goofed around. Despite the cinderblock weights on his eyes he couldn't trick himself into sleeping. Instead he flickered his hands in and out of sight, made his bones show through his skin. He juggled an ecto blast, an iceball and even considered trying it with his own head. Realizing that was beyond stupid he just let himself go zero gravity and floated around the room.

The ceiling was incredibly high and anyone looking through the window could see the boy pantomiming a swim up and down and all around the volume of the room. It was distracting and fun. When that turned boring he returned to the time waster of his years pre-Phantom. He sat Indian style on the board stiff covers and slipped his earbuds in. The first song started up, "The Exorcist" ha-ha-ha, and got a whole ten seconds before he turned it off. '_What if I use up the battery before I get home? What if I never hear these songs again…or at least until I catch up with the years they were made in this world?_' That cheery thought in mind he tucked the gadget back under the pillow. "I figure maybe a song a," insert yawn, "day would be okay. And maybe," yaawwn, "Euro eighties radio won't be too bad. Is Chumbawamba playing or is it the wrong," deep yawn, eyes nearly cemented shut and his back was all but melting into the mattress, "year..?" The air didn't answer and he didn't much care.

Danny slipped himself under the covers plowed his black hair into the pillow, feeling the hard edges of his possessions through the plush. His mind began to glaze over with blissful unconsciousness. He was about to shake hands with the Sandman when his stomach filled with ice and squeezed in on itself. "As a matter of fact that so-called band _is_ polluting the airwaves, but that Tubthumbing song you're thinking of has yet to be written."

"I was this close to sleeping, you know. _Gyuh!_" Alucard had decided to manifest himself into the wall touching the bed's headboard. Half of him hung out of said wall and loomed over Danny's head. His fangs shone between peeled back lips as if about to ingest the boy's head. Picking up on this Alucard dropped his jaws open in a gaping black hole and lunged for Danny's skull. He went intangible and fell through the bed to the Persian rug beneath. His fingers clung into the plush carpet as the mattress dipped closer to him. Danny rolled out from under the bedframe to see the vampire sitting lazily on the bed's edge. "Did you have to do that?"

"Do you have to keep thinking up such amusing ideas?" Danny stood and put a hand to his head on reflex. Having someone, let alone this lunatic, walk in his head was a pretty irking idea. "It's not my fault you leave your brain's door wide open." Danny's scalp prickled and he tried to imagine the static channel on its highest volume.

"I don't care if it's a freaking doggy door to you, can you stop poking your head in? And maybe let me sleep?" Alucard raised a brow behind his sunglasses as if to say, 'ha-ha-ha-personal-rights-what're-those?' "Okay, until you get bored and leave, what do you want?"

"To let you in on a few things. And no, I won't waste your time with another 'proper introduction.' I just want to say how much I'm looking forward to the rest of our time together. And so we're clear, I'll know the second you leave this plane and whether I have to follow you or drag you back, I will get at least one fight out of you. Understood?"

'_Did this guy come from the same vendetta gene pool as Skulker or something!?_' "Dude, I've been here a total of maybe five hours. _Maybe_. Our first meeting was a five _minute_ deal with me just trying to give you as much space as humanly possible. What the heck did I do to hang a _please slaughter_ sign around my neck?"

"You think I want to kill you?"

"Well trying to eat a guy's throat isn't usually a sign of friendship where I'm from."

"Oh that? We both knew you could dodge it. If I _really_ wanted your Adam's apple, carotid or your whole damn head they'd already be digested by now."

"You have a real gift for putting people at ease you know. Do you do parties for the elderly and people with heart conditions too?"

"I was just nipping at you, phantom. I realize my welcoming party didn't pull an ounce of fight from you." Alucard was suddenly standing hazardously close to the halfa and the latter only barely kept still. The vampire leaned down and forward as the shades slid down his nose. His eyes were peepholes into Hell. "_But I plan to._ I bear you no personal ill will, phantom, none at all. But your thoughts and memories are quite the open book. A photo album really: I can see snapshots of every battle. Every new ability, every hit you've given and taken. All but one that you've taken extra measures to try and forget. Something with a man's head on fire…"

'_**No. Not him**_**.**' Danny imagined his head filling with hot, liquid lead before being covered with electrified barbed wire. "Let's not touch that one."

Alucard leered, "Fair enough. To cut the prattle short, I want a good fight. Call it boredom. Call it a guy thing. Call it crazy. I just want a fight." He paused. "And maybe a drink of ghost blood. Never met a spirit that could bleed and I've always wondered what it would taste like." Danny blinked bowling ball eyes at him and took a step back.

'_Aren't _you_ just the picture of good will?_' "For the record I'm not a hundred percent ghost. I'm half human too—completely different flavor of dead guy."

"Never had hybrid blood either. Should make for a good chaser one of these nights after I've had my fill of pseudo-vampire blood. Or maybe just a snack while you're sleeping, whatever works. Well, I'm glad we had this little talk, poltergeist. Sweet dreams now." With that he evaporated. Leaving Danny alone and very grateful for not having any of Mr. Dornez' drinks. He turned out the room's light, got under the sheets and covered his neck with a throw blanket. While that wouldn't do much good, he was sure the ecto blast incubating under his palm would work as a good garlic substitute.


	3. Order 3

Order 3: Headshot

He was at the Nasty Burger. He sat beside Tucker, racing him through two double cheeseburgers, Tucker in the lead. Jazz sat across from his friend rolling her eyes, Sam just gobbling her salad contently. Valerie's shift ended and she joined the table as Danny began to retell his bizarre nightmare of vampires and explicitly named cigarettes. Outside they heard heavy tires squeal into the parking lot. The sound of official men on official-sounding business followed after and they saw the Guys and White marching out of their hi-tech vans. Team Phantom tensed and readied to bolt when Danny noticed one Guy and White that was decidedly breaking the dress code—he wore a business suit of deepest, bloodiest red with round glasses to match. The Guy in Red flashed his pearly fangs at him through the window and winked.

Danny Fenton opened his eyes with a start and pulled the covers tighter around him. "Augh, I hate those stupid dreams-in-a-dream things." '_Wonder what Jazz'll think--. Oh._' "Oh." Unless this was one of the rarer dreams-in-a-dream-in-a-dream, Danny was still in the dark, monumental guest room under the sleek sheets of its bed. "Oh…" Before he had time to mope he realized what woke him up. The sounds from the dream had followed him into the waking world and were still going on outside his window wall. Danny bounced out of bed and looked through the glass. Stories below were a handful of artillery vehicles with swarms of soldiers flooding into them. Once filled the mini-tanks rolled out of automated iron gates in single file down the country road. Perched atop the gate was a happy-looking eyesore in crimson. It tipped its hat to him before dissolving into a cloud of bats and soaring after the soldiers with their wings against the stars.

_Should I leave you an invitation in bold italics, or have you caught the hint?_

Cue hair standing on end. Danny rubbed the nape of his neck and batted his choices back and forth. On the one hand he could go back to sleep and try to sequester himself in the fantasy home of his dreams. On the other he could keep to his routine of his sleep being a crapshoot and have moving targets to take his aggression out on. He sighed. "Ah, you only visit the Anne Rice version of eighties London once, right?" He took in a breath to give his battle cry and stopped. He was ninety percent sure if Alucard or anyone else was listening he would have yet another razz-worthy trait to couple with him fighting in a spandex suit. So he gulped down the urge and just transformed, flying out the window after the action. He caught up to the bats just enough to not be in the range of any guano they/he decided to drop. The trail of vehicles curled and turned down various roads until they reached a park with a huge swatch of woods.

In the moonlight he a magenta and white banner that had hung between two trees but now hung torn from one branch. A couple of picnic tables were littered with the remains of a child's birthday party. Half a cake lay splattered over a bench with a pile of pink-decaled toys thrown haphazardly around the grass. The mini-tanks halted just before the sandy area of the playground began. The soldiers flowed out and scattered over what had to be a crime scene, analyzing bits of evidence Danny couldn't hope to find. "You're not supposed to." The ghost boy managed to keep his yelp in his throat when Alucard appeared a hair away from him. The vampire began to drop down and Danny followed.

"Is that another 'clueless' crack, or--?"

"They are searching for anything to point them to the poor little children, but there isn't a trace of conventional evidence here. In other words:", he nodded his shades down knowingly, "no blood." Alucard sniffed and rotated his head back and forth.

"Then this thing isn't a vampire?"

"Oh he is. He's just not a sloppy show-off like most new Nosferatu. This one's after something other than gore." He leered with hateful joy. "They are quite the treats." One soldier with short-clipped hair waltzed to the pair, his eyes glued to something in his hand.

"Alucard, I'm not liking the looks of this one. I foun' this near the edge of the woods and—holy Christ!" He'd looked up to see Danny Phantom in all his glowing glory and whipped out his gun on impulse. Danny held up his hands and took an exaggerated step back.

"Relax! I'm on your side." The soldier kept the gun cocked. "If I wasn't wouldn't he," Danny pointed to the vampire, "have beaten me to an ectoplasmic pulp?" The gun lowered and Danny saw that his name patch read _C. Porter_. He also saw what was dangling in his other hand. "Is that a Barbie?" Porter suddenly remembered why he'd ventured there in the first place and turned warily to Alucard.

"Like I said, I foun' the thing near the woods and look what I foun' on the pretty princess' crotch." He pointed at the spot on the doll's gown. Danny felt something angry and ill lurch in his gut. Splattered over the crotch of Barbie's dress was a splotch of white gook any male could recognize after a fun night in his dreams or with his girl. It stank horribly and Danny scrunched his face up in disgust. This world was just racking up all kinds of hate points. Before Danny knew what he was doing his hand was clamped around the doll's microscopic waist and hurling the thing into a tree. Porter gawked at him and got as far as, "Why did you--?", before the halfa went rocketing into the woods leaving a neon green trail after him to shock the soldiers.

He phased through the trees, not willing to waste valuable pummeling time with dodging around the trunks. It was only by sheer luck that his hunch was right—the stomach clenching gimmick wasn't just with Alucard. His torso felt like it was condensing in an invisible corset. As he grew closer he began to catch sight of little things in his peripheral vision. A couple discarded shirts. Splashes of scarlet on the ground and branches. A dented pink box still holding the brand new baby doll meant for the birthday girl. Finally when it felt like his gut would snap him in two, he froze. Now, he might have froze on his own seeing as his…would it be a vampire sense?...unclenched. But whether the feeling had kept on crushing him or not, the sight before him would still have halted him like a brick wall.

Zombies.

Honest-to-goodness, shambling, rotting, moaning zombies all wandering around in a decomposing crowd. Their clothes were muddied, bloodied and torn, some of them still wearing the pointy party hats from the birthday girl's soiree. As Alucard would say, Danny's spandex was in a twist. The sight of these mindless, decaying people-things that were no doubt parents, and family friends enraged him in a way coming across a family of ghosts never had. Ghosts were already dead and past the event of murder. They had faces and minds and personalities. If you didn't know they were specters, most humans could just walk up and have a chat with them without batting an eye. These atrocities were just…just… '_Just walking, biting pulp. Some vampire went and turned them into rotting, parent-shaped puppets._'

Deep thinking aside—they were _zombies_. What guy worth their Y chromosome hasn't dreamed of blasting a zombie in the head to watch the big, gory _pop_? A mixture of both noble thoughts filled him and fueled the first blast. The zombie's head vanished in a starburst of green and whatever white-grey shmeg it bled instead of blood. The body flopped to the grass with a wet _thumpt_. Its meaty, steak-hitting-dirt sound was what triggered the rest. Danny had never fought anything so slow. Every shot hit its mark in a space of six seconds. With B movie grace every zombie hit the ground at once. Despite the grisliness of the moment, Danny couldn't help the guy-giddy tingle of knowing he'd just headshot a gaggle of zombies. Of course a cluster of helpless little girls had to ruin it by shrieking a few yards beyond the zombie's mass grave. Danny shot towards the screams, finding a second wave of zombies surrounding a sheltered picnic spot in a close-packed clump of trees.

Beneath this shelter was a group of little girls no older than six cringing into each other beneath the shelter away from the zombies that had once been their parents, and the _thing_ crouched atop one of the picnic tables.

The _thing_ crouched atop this picnic table held a little girl, her plastic birthday girl crown coming unfastened from its hairclips as she thrashed and mewled.

This little girl with her crooked birthday crown thrashed and mewled because this _thing_ was contentedly ripping slashes into her shirt with his talon of a fingernail.

Enormous, bloody canines twinkled in _its_ mouth as _it_ laughed.

Danny Phantom assimilated all these details readily, as he would when flying into any battle. However, unlike when he dove headfirst into a trap by Skulker, an insidious plot by Plasmius, or a door by Spectra, this scene found something previously undiscovered in him. This scene, a hideous mesh of horror flicks he and Sam had weathered on fightless nights, traipsed through his skull and happened upon a dusty switch. The scene promptly kicked the switch on and incredulous, infuriated fireworks threw his brain and body into conflagration. The splotch of white seed on the Barbie should have been a warning Danny would later suppose, but all of it—the mutilated mothers and fathers, the tiny girls stained with tears, snot, sweat and blood, and the disgusting, inhuman _thing_ leisurely shredding the birthday girl's blouse—could not hope to assault his senses and leave him level-headed.

Danny thought he heard the _thing_ say something but he couldn't quite hear it as he tore around the circle of zombie guards smashing their spongy heads in. The girls squealed again before throwing in a few shocked gasps when he landed on the concrete platform of the shelter. Once again sound seemed to distance itself from the halfa's eardrums as he only caught garbles of "supa'hero" "what is" and "help God, no more" from the children and an indignant-sounding "the fuck're you" from the _thing_. Without taking his eyes off the _thing_—'_If he even twitches towards her neck I'm turning his teeth intangible and planting them in his eyes. Scratch that, I'll just pull his skull out._'—he spoke to the kids: "Get out of here kids. Run back to the playground, there are soldiers that'll help you."

Most of them made a run for it at the word 'get', crying as they scuttled past their ex-parents. Two stayed behind to plead, "But Alice! Alice! He's got Alice, he's got--!" The _thing_ moved and Danny was on _it_ like white on rice. He had Alice the World's Unluckiest Birthday Girl in one arm and the _thing's_ neck pinned under his spare palm, the _thing_ snarling and swearing by turns. Danny set Alice down on shaky feet and she crossed her chubby child arms over her chest. The plastic crown finally toppled off. She spared Danny one long glassy stare before running to what the teen could only assume were her "BFFs." They sprinted after the others.

"Now." Danny turned green suns on the _thing_ who was still trying to wrench his glove from _its_ trachea. "How much can I pummel you so that you're still relatively alive when I'm done?" _It_ gave the ghost boy a look before cackling around his hand.

"Alive? _Alive!?_ D'you have any idea what I _am_!?" _Its _eyes grew bulbous and twinkled red as _its_ maw cracked and widened into a massive piranha grin. "_I'm a fuckin' vampire!_" To emphasize this incredible revelation _it_ craned back _its_ fist and drove a right hook square into Danny's jaw. It twisted his head around 180 degrees and for a fraction of a second Danny desperately hoped he could do what his film counterparts could do. He turned his neck further with a slimy _shcrack_. He could do it. Danny turned his head around a full 360 degrees much to the delightful horror of the _thing_.

"And I'm Danny Phantom. Pleased to meet you." His fist drove into _its_ teeth and was rewarded with a magnificent orchestra of bony cracks, crunches and shatters. And _it_ screamed. That was a bonus that came with every other blow Danny delivered. The only times Danny could recall wanting to hurt an enemy was when he was up against Vlad, Spectra or that nightmare version of himself. This still held true as he didn't want to _hurt_ this thing per se—he wanted to throttle _it_ to _its_ pain threshold until _it_ reached the brink of vampiric death, and then hold _it_ there.

In Danny's humble opinion he did it quite nicely. Head bashing, energy blasting, electrocuting, body slamming and overall bone breaking made up the background noise to _its_ tortured screeching. When Danny was holding no more than a simpering, pleading bag of blood and bone, he decided he was finished. If he'd taken it too far according to whatever rules Hellsing went by he could hide behind his not knowing the ropes. Honestly he couldn't care either way.

_Clap._

_Clap._

_Clap._

The stomach clench came a second after. Danny spun to see Alucard hanging upside down from the roof's edge. The vampire's gloves clapped again.

_Clap. _

_Clap._

_Clap._

"Brilliant. Six stars out of five. Much better than your first performance." As he spoke he drifted down to the grass. "And naturally I was right; the ghouls and their puppet masters really are child's play compared to your usual fare."

'_Why thank you for saying so Dr. Lecter. Are you going to ask me about the lambs now?_' "Thanks. Now," he held up the _thing_ by _its_ scruff, "is there something specific you Hellsingers are supposed to do with them or..?" _It_ blinked blearily at Alucard before a sickeningly hopeful smile split his broken face.

"Y-Yer a vampire too aren't you? You are right!? Yuh-you can take care o' this cocker ri--!?"

_**Boom!**_

The _thing's_ head exploded like a water balloon full of watermelon chunks and tomato soup. "_Whoa!_" Danny snapped his reddened glove away from the spot and stumbled away from the falling cadaver. _It's_ flesh transmuted into blood that flooded out of the clothes in a rough "t." Danny's eyes jumped back to Alucard who was still holding the giant silver handgun that had popped the _thing's_ head. Alucard calmly tucked the firearm away as Danny continued to gape. "What. Was. _That?_"

"Exactly what we 'Hellsingers' do to vampires, ghouls, and every other bogeyman that threatens God, the Queen and England in general. Or in this case, a group of elementary schoolers that would've served as that bastard's vampiric harem. We find, we kill, and if possible we rescue. Speaking of which," he tapped his chin in thought, "I'll have to wipe those children's minds before I head back." He sighed. "This is why it's easier to wait until everyone's dead."

'_Wait, what? WHAT?_' "That's…cheery. But, I doubt anything could make them forget," he gestured to the slasher movie fodder around them, "all of this. I had my brainwashed rinsed and dried _twice_ and my memories still broke through." Alucard shrugged.

"Not with me. The most they'll get are nightmares of the highest caliber. Consciously they won't recall a thing." If only he had one of those cheesy twinkles to his smile he'd have been a great TV host.

"Again, cheery, but all of this is still too surreal for me."

"This coming from the half dead boy who's battled sentient plants and demonic cafeteria workers." Danny massaged his temple.

"Enough with the mind reading, okay? This is just—this is all so…" '_Bloody. Just like he said. It's bloodier, grimmer and…and realer than I'm used to. Everyone I've ever fought I've either left alive and unharmed or were dead to begin with. Even the ghosts' schemes were brighter than what that _thing_ did. What _it_ was going to do. Not even Vlad sank that low._' "What?" Alucard was closer now, his grin smaller and unfairly savvy of the whole situation. "What?"

"You will get used to it, poltergeist. You all do." His spine rippled up to his brain where it tensed suspiciously.

"All who?" Alucard brushed past the halfa, stomping through the ruby puddle on the pavement. The vampire stopped on the opposite side of the picnic shelter, beyond which Danny could see a troop of soldiers tromping out of the woods. Alucard gave him a sideways glance.

"Ask _them_." He said this with a forward nod before evaporating. C. Porter came marching up to the ring of beheaded ghouls a moment later. The man looked from the ghouls to Danny to the clothed blood and back to Danny.

"I'm willing to bet this an' the mess back there was your handiwork an' Alucard took care of that sick bugger.", he finished by pointing to the puddle.

"More or less. Are the kids okay?" Porter spared the ghouls a double take with his hand on his finger on the trigger before looking back to Danny.

"As okay as they can be after all this hell. I just hope Alucard won't skimp on his memory wipe. Seeing flashes of this shit in your head does awful things to you." The soldier shook his head and stepped towards the ghost boy while his subordinates began to examine and drag away the ghouls, most looking over their shoulders at their spandex clad visitor. "I, ah, I'm sorry about pulling the gun on you…"

"Danny."

"Danny. With as many things as I've seen with Hellsing you get used to firing at anything that looks like it came out of a horror film. Nothing personal." Danny forced a smirk into place.

"You should see me in the mornings." Porter snickered lightly at that and held out his hand. '_At least he didn't start it with the words _proper introduction_._'

As they shook Porter said, "I'm Colin Porter, Danny. Hope we can count on your fire power again, mate. This is one of maybe four missions I can recall where we didn't have to fire a single roun'." Alucard's last words pestered Danny from the corner of his mind.

"We'll see, I guess. Um, this might be awkward but did Alucard ever give you some creepy pep talk about 'getting used to it'?" Colin looked confused a moment before giving the ghost boy a tired smile with just a trace of Alucard's knowledge in it.

"Yeah. It's what he tells every new recruit to the Hellsing army after their first mission. Always been right too."


	4. Order 4

Order 4: A River in Egypt

After remarking on the mind-blowing (ha-ha) subtlety of Alucard's words Danny took his leave back to Hellsing Manor and his temporary bed. By the time he got there it was nearly four in the morning but with the after images of the scene still lingering behind his eyelids, there was no way he could get to sleep. Five and a half hours later Walter Dornez had to literally shake him awake or resort to using a bull horn on the lad. When Danny finally lifted his head his first words were: "…Am I still in the vampiric Euro 80's?"

The butler's face went dry, "I'd appreciate you referring to the Organization by its proper title, Mr. Fenton,"

'_You should talk._'

The dryness softened into empathy, "but yes, I'm afraid you are still grounded here." Danny gave a groan that in Walter's opinion rivaled the wails of many Hellsing soldiers after New Year's. The lad even dragged his hands over his eyes and forehead in suitable hangover style. He looked like he'd slept hard after coming home, his eyes red and his pallor unhealthier than when he was 'dead.' In fact he resembled Integra in her first week of her new self-enforced sleep schedule. Mr. Dornez had half a mind to just let the poor boy go back to sleep, but Sir Integra had said… "Sir Integra wishes to have a word with you in her office." Danny rubbed his eyes again and hung his legs—he'd slept in his clothes?—over the bedside.

"Right now?"

"Right now. Do you remember the way to her office, or--?" Danny waved him off with a nod and lumbered out of bed. As he passed Walter detected the scent of blood trailing from his clothes and the butler bristled. So Alucard hadn't been exaggerating. And if the boy really hadn't come face-to-face with a slaughter before… Walter grimaced inside and thought of other greenhorns he'd seen on the killing field, all of them coming back shaking and bug-eyed with the experience. Some become properly jaded after the first time, while others steered into more hazardous territory. As Walter began to remake the boy's bed he pondered the merits of letting him have a sip of gin.

Not ten steps down the hall Danny smelled it. The fading aroma of blueberry pancakes, cereal, eggs, bacon, orange juice and a smattering of hash browns stampeded from upstairs and rang in his senses, making his mouth water. His stomach snarled in synch, reminding him it was still there and unsatisfied with the lack of input. Danny pulled up his pants and yanked the belt tighter as he came to the big oak doors of Sir Integra's office. He creaked one giant slab of a door open to see the chair with its back to him. "Come in Mr. Fenton." Danny slid inside and shut the door.

"Still just Danny, Sir Integra. Uh, good morning.", he paused, "It is the morning, right?" She didn't turn around.

"9:30. Another half hour and the chefs will cut you off from breakfast entirely." Danny nearly shrieked at the notion and he had to bury his fist in his gut to keep quiet. "But I won't keep you long." His stomach sighed. "I'd just like to clarify a few things in case Alucard and Commander Porter skimmed on the matter. What all do you understand about Hellsing, Mr. Fenton?" Honestly, what was so difficult about the concept of _Danny_?

"Well, I know the short of it is that you protect England from monsters. I'd guess you specialize in killing off," '_Those _things_._' "vampires and those zombie things. That's about it." Now Sir Integra turned the chair slightly, her profile a stark cutout against the sunshine of her window wall. The light glinted off her glasses and made her hair seem nearly translucent. She didn't look at him.

"True on all counts, and those 'zombie-things' are referred to as ghouls. The difference is that unlike the frenzied, disease-riddled things in horror films, ghouls are real and are under a single point of control by their vampire masters. They are the product of vampire bites inflicted on non-virgins with virgin victims in question becoming vampiric slaves still retaining their minds." A sliver of a smile curled her lips as she turned her visible blue eye on him. "Thankfully Alucard suggested you'd be of the latter."

'_Suggested I was..? Oh wait, _hey_!_' Danny plastered a hand to his face. "Oh that's nice. Is there anything he _didn't_ broadcast?"

"If it's any consolation that was where his personal commentary ended." She tugged a lock of hair out of her glasses. "Outside of the details of your massacre, of course." Danny's eyes widened and he felt something nervous coil in him.

"Massacre?" Now she turned fully to look him in the eye, her steely irises gazing up at him under platinum brows. There was a deranged mix of feelings in those dots of blue. Accusation, determination, and a queer glaze of hope.

"Don't play dumb, Mr. Fenton. If a word of your origin is true you've dealt with far more stress without coming out amnesiac and shell-shocked. According to Alucard you obliterated the heads of no less than eighteen ghouls with your internal arsenal, saved every child in the target vampire's possession and, as the git put it, 'merrily beat the unholy _hell_'", the girl didn't fail to catch the boy's wince at the word, " 'out of' said target vampire without breaking a sweat." Danny suddenly became riveted with the state of his feet and began to fiddled with his fingers in his pockets.

"I wouldn't say _merrily_." Integra nodded and kept her eyes on his face as she pulled something from a drawer. She waited until Danny brought his gaze up before lighting the cigar. His eyes flashed in alarm at the sight but said nothing as she placed the thing between her teeth.

Around the cigar she said, "I wouldn't say I minded if you were laughing like mad or snarling in rage. The soldiers don't do much of either, not counting some of the more eccentric soldiers. My point being, did you take down the enemy force as Alucard claimed you did? Single-handedly, I mean."

"Yes." '_Some of the physically easiest attacking I've ever done. God, I never even thought of what would happen if I ever hit a person before last night._' "Why?" Integra blew a stream of smoke from her lips like the classy ladies of noir films past and held the cigar between her fingers.

"Because provided we discover your limits you could be a supernatural force for our mission not unlike Alucard. He saves us the trouble of countless rounds of ammunition and human lives on the field. Doubling that kind of paranormal power, until further notice," she tacked on, "would be an obvious plus. What I am asking is that you lend us your services should the appropriate situations arise, Mr. Fenton. I will not put a gun to your head or throw you out on your ear if you decline." She leaned forward in her seat and Danny felt the same urge to lean away as he had with the lunatic in the basement. "I ask this of you for the sake of the Organization and its aim to preserve human life." She leaned back into her chair and took another contemplating puff. "What do you say?"

'_What am I supposed to say to that? No?_' "Yeah—yes. If there's any way I can help, I will. What kind of appropriate situations are we talking about?" Tan lips stretched in a happy line around her cigar.

"I'm willing to bet Alucard will want you to take care of any day jobs he would otherwise be dragged out of his coffin for. That aside you'll be called upon when a particularly nasty group of apparitions appears. In fact you'd be most helpful when we deal with literal specters. Until we reach that circumstance I'd like you to display the extent of your powers in a," she looked warily at the floor, "_controlled_ environment. After that I think it would be best to heighten your living capabilities as well." She took a therapeutic breath from the cigar as Danny gave her a puzzled look.

He gripped his stomach in tighter. "My living capabilities meaning--?"

"You'll be doing hand-to-hand combat and gun training with the soldiers." Danny could've sworn her next smile was sunny. "If you're feeling particularly suicidal you can start with Walter too." The sunny smile shrank to sly smirk level again.

"I'll think about it. Is that all you wanted to talk about?"

"Yes, you can go eat now. But before you go—," Danny froze painstakingly half in and half out of the floor with both hands trying to smother his purring torso, "—take a shower after you eat and if you must, change back into those clothes. You're first mission will be to go shopping with Walter for more than one outfit."

"It's okay I don't want you to blow any more cash on me." '_Not counting money spent on food. With any luck I won't be here long enough to need another change of clothes._'

"The soldiers' attire will swamp you and I doubt you'll want to share my apparel. Unless you'd prefer pleated skirts?" Visions of the 'My Fair Lady' incident flashed traumatically in his head.

"Shopping's fun."

"Indeed. You're dismissed." Danny fell through the floor and rocketed along the trail of breakfast aromas. He halted at the dining room entrance, his face taut with ravenous joy. It was by sheer willpower he didn't growl an ominous _fooood_ to really disturb the cooks and maids cleaning up. As it stood the lot of them nearly jumped out of their professional aprons. Danny cleared his throat and reigned in his psycho _gimme-food-or-I-eat-you _face.

"You wouldn't happen to have anything left over, would you?" A pair of servants shoved a cooling plate of pancakes and a dish of bacon across the table at him and one chef backed away from a pitcher of orange juice as if it was riddled with Ebola. '_Note to self: learn how to do subtle entries._' "Sorry for freaking you out." Already half the staff had stampeded out the other door while a single servant stammered.

"N-No, it's quite alright! Most of them are just getting used to the vampire of the house. We'll just, ah, leave you to yourself." Then he and the remains of the workers made like the Roadrunner and zipped out of the dining room. Danny might have had a dose of angst if his hunger hadn't stifled it. He was at the table and inhaling the food at record speed. He didn't stop until the last drop of syrup was gone.

"Ahh." '_It's going to feel like I have an anvil in my stomach in three seconds, but it'll still be worth it._' That was taken care of. He was ready to fly back to his room but considering there might be other as yet non-traumatized workers around, he decided to hoof it. Two stories of hoofing it later he'd happily give the next servant phantom phobia and just march through the walls. After finally reaching his floor his mantra consisted only of: "Ow, feet, ow, feet, ow, _feet…_"

"Yes, it does take some getting used to." This time Danny was able to mute the startled cry before it got past his teeth. Walter Dornez stood a pace away from the halfa with a placid smile cracking his face.

"Did you have to go to a special school to specialize in giving people heart attacks or am I just a special case?"

"You seem to be naturally jumpy, Mr. Fenton—and it's more of an acquired trait than an educated one. Treading lightly quickly rises into one's priorities when one tries to sneak up on hyper sensitive creatures that will readily eat you if given the chance. Speaking of, did you get any breakfast?" Danny blinked.

'_Interesting segue._' "Yeah, I got there just as they were cleaning up. I think I might have freaked them out a little, though." Walter waved this off and smirked.

"They'll get over it quickly, I assure you. When the staff first dealt with Alucard it sounded as if a choir of cats was shrieking in unison and a third of them quit the first day. The most your visitation could cause is a request for readily available liquor next to the aspirin."

"Good to know. Um, Miss Integra,"

"_Sir_ Integra."

"she said that we're supposed to go out and get me--."

"More than the outfit you came in.", he said with a nod to Danny's person.

"Uh huh."

"I'm well aware, Mr. Fenton."

"_Danny_, Mr. Dornez."

"_Walter_, Danny. Go wash up and meet me by the front doors." The butler continued down the flight of stairs with barely a tilt in his poker straight back. Danny found his room. The bathroom in it was a thing of Vlad Masters proportions. Everything gleamed and shone and was three times as big as anyone who might use it. He speed showered, re-dressed, pocketed his wallet of unusable 90's-printed cash and brushed his teeth with the untouched Colgate brush waiting beside the sink. Back in the guest room he began to put on his shoes when he wondered what Walter would think if he brought his mp3. There was no way he could use it in public, but if the drive to a store took them across all of the country road he'd seen and they ran out of conversation he wanted something to plug up the quiet time. '_Or the contemplation time. Either or._' He decided to risk it and reached under his pillow.

He felt the cellphone and nothing else.

Danny yanked away the pillow and only saw the cell lying on its back with dots of lint on its window. But the mp3 was gone. A twinkle of panic grew in him as he dug between the mattress and the headboard, looked under the bed and dumped the pillow out of its cover. It was gone. Then he felt a tiny clench in his middle. "He wouldn't." '_The same guy who threatened to bite off your head as a joke? Pfft, no!_' Danny grabbed his head. "He would." He would've gone down to the vampire's room himself…maybe…but Walter was waiting. Danny tapped one foot, imagined the two stories worth of stairs again, and dropped through the floor. He appeared at Walter's side five blisterless seconds later. The butler had been nose deep in another book, this one titled, _The Count of Monte Cristo._ The book closed with a snap and was plopped on the long table beside the front doors.

Keys in hand Walter opened one monumental door and the pair stepped out. "I spoke with Sir Integra and she said you were to have an allowance of six other outfits. Likewise she recommended that one outfit be a bit more fight-ready than jeans and tennis shoes along with some form of combat boots."

'_Ohhh ducky._' "I'm guessing that's for the hand-to-hand stuff?" Walter nodded. They were in the sunlight now and Danny could see the harsh green of the grass and the color of the flora in contrast to what he'd seen last night. If they didn't know better a passerby could mistake the place for a college or the British version of the Playhouse Mansion. They stopped outside the garage where Walter fiddled with a keypad beside one of the giant doors. '_Are we taking a tank to the store?_'

"In case you're wondering, no we won't be taking any of the artillery vehicles into the city."

'_Does everyone here have telepathy!?_' "Then what are we taking?" The garage door whirred and dragged itself up to reveal a black AC Greyhound Saloon with enough wax on it to reflect the sunlight in their eyes. "Oooh."

"Quite. Shotgun?" Danny all but manifested in the passenger's seat as Walter got behind the wheel.

A mile of country road later Danny professed a single word: "Weird."

"Hm?"

"It's just so bizarre.", he breathed.

"That you're in another dimension?"

"There's that, but I was referring to the fact that we're driving on the left side of the road without crashing."

"Ah. What all do you know about England?"

"Just the reverse road rules thing and that you provided the world with the Beatles and John Cleese." Walter chuckled and took a sharp turn. They could see the tops of rural buildings on the horizon.

"Triumphs to be sure. Now I feel I should warn you that there are quite a few xenophobes in the public so--."

"Xenowhats?"

"Ah, people adverse to foreigners."

'_I.E. the delightful Euro 80's couple from last night._' "Oh. What about them?"

"If I might be so crass, the only way your accent could be more American would be if you threw in a Southern twang."

Danny cracked a smile. "That obvious?"

Walter returned the look. "That obvious. I'm not asking you take on one of those dreadful cockney accents, but just brace for any needling remarks."

"Walter, forty percent of the banter I've heard in the past two years has been discussion about how much my enemies want to kill me and how they want to do it. Skulker held a serious conversation with me about whether I wanted to be stuffed or have my head mounted on his wall."

The butler's eyes bugged comically. "I--."

Danny leaned against his seatbelt. "_He brought sample plaques for me to choose from._ I think I can handle some heckling."

"I don't doubt you Mr…"

"…"

"Er, Danny. I just felt I should warn you."

Danny nestled himself back in his seat and looked out the window at the estates dwindling into places of business. "Thanks." Silence reigned for another ten minutes before the butler gave up and turned on the radio. Danny could barely recognize three songs. He made a note to get back his mp3 one way or another. If they got back in time it would still be light out and Danny could take it back from the sleeping Nosferatu. He was just getting enthralled with the wonder of store windows passing in a blur when Walter said something. "Sorry?"

"I said we're almost there. I'm going to drop you off, go to the pharmacy and come back in an hour." Walter turned into a parking lot planted in front of a long strip mall with store names Danny had never seen in his life. Suddenly they were parked and there was a credit card in his hand."I'll leave the spending to your judgment. But as per Sir Integra's orders, I must inform you that should an extra pound be spent she will quote unquote, 'make Alucard look like the Count from Sesame Street by comparison.'" Walter smirked evilly. "Something to chew on. See you in an hour." With that jolly thought in mind Danny was deposited on the sidewalk, the AC driving back into traffic. Danny drummed his fingers nervously on the thin plastic before tucking it into his wallet.

'_I'm in an alternate dimension paranormal version of London in the eighties just dropped off by the butler of a vampire hunting organization to go clothes shopping. Forget comic books, this is outright manga._' He began to pace along the pavement, searching the display windows for anything masculine and not reeking of fad designs. Three displays later and Danny could feel his retinas going on strike. "Jeans, people. I just want jeans and a shirt without a popped collar. Is that so much to ask?" The last store was a jackpot of plain pants and nearly featureless t-shirts. Naturally there was a grand total of three customers that he could see compared to the swarms he'd seen in through other windows. In a depressingly anticlimactic fifteen minutes he'd picked out his shirts, jeans and aforementioned combat boots without a single bump in the transaction. He found himself sitting on a bench outside the store in record time, passing the snail-slow minutes by making tiny pellets of ice and flicking them out of the shade and into the sunlight where they vaporized immediately.

"Stupid mp3 stealing vampire.", he muttered as he flicked a gumball-sized chunk into a decorative berry bush.

"Ow!", said the bush. Danny paused with his thumb still out as he gaped at the shrub.

"Hello?" There was no reply, just a tiny rustling from its middle. Lugging the two bags with him he walked up to the bush and peered through the branches. Through the network of twigs, leaves and clusters of berries he could see a girl of ten huddled underneath. Her clothes were ragged, her hands and shins were glazed with dirt and her yellow hair was one giant snarl. Giant baby blues stared up at him as she bit her juice-smeared lip.

"Ah, h-hullo…" She smiled weakly. "Care for a bite, guvnuh?" She grimaced sickly after the last word, her tiny hand clamping into what was left of her stomach. Danny dropped the bags and began to pull apart the bush.

"What the heck are you doing in there?" The girl accepted his hand when he offered it and she clambered out of the plant, groaning as she did.

"I was jus—_urp_—just eating some o' the berries. Haven't eaten since yesterday and that was just a piece o' sna-_aah_-ack cake. Ooh." The kid began to bend at the waist and her shoulders trembled. Danny eyeballed the berries and recognized that shade of red painfully well. He'd eaten a variant of it in his first and only trip to summer camp where he'd ruined a pair of shoes with one colossal heave. "_Huuaagch!_" Just like that. The halfa had taken a wise step back and only the girl got her Velcro sneakers splattered. Seeing the mess made her cheeks puff out again and this time she aimed for the bush and its betraying berries.

Danny's face drew down in a disgusted crescent and he made an urping noise of his own. "Aw geeze, how many did you eat?" The child mumbled something like "twenny" before hacking out one last glop of vomit. She coughed thinly for a few seconds and was done. "Is it all out?"

"Uh huh. D'you have anything non-pukey I could eat, mister?" She shook the toes of her shoes to the side to flick off the remaining berry barf. Danny scratched the back of his neck and batted the possible answers in his head. If he wasn't willing to risk Integra's ire when she got an unnecessary food bill? No. If he was ready to risk it and _not_ the clawing-at-the-hero-complex-conscience he'd surely feel otherwise? Yes.

"I can get you something. But first let's get that stuff off you." He pointed at her shoes. The teen knelt down. "Close your eyes."

The girl scrunched her face up indignantly and took a riled cat stance. "Oh so you're one of _those_ 'mericans?"

"One of what--? No! No, I mean you can't look when I…"

"Look when you what?", she probed taking a cautious step forward.

"When I do my, uh, trick. Tell you what, just look up at me." Danny raised his hands to his shoulders. The girl glanced up and opened her mouth to ask why when he sent the surge of intangibility out of his feet. It flowed through the space between them and lapped at her shoes, dropping filth off of them. The kid felt the tingle and looked down just as the wave receded. Upon seeing her barf free footwear she was the tiniest bit surprised.

"How the hell'd," Danny winced, "you do that!?"

"Ancient Chinese secret. Now do you want some food or what?" The prospect of food trumped surreality instantly and the kid followed him as they walked to the end of a strip mall where a small restaurant sat. The jaunty sign posted above it proclaimed it was, _Benny's Bevs and Bites_ complete with a little cartoon burger and shake added to the end. As they approached the door Danny felt they'd become close enough to ask the burning question, "So what's your name?"

"Oh. S-Seras. Who're you?"

"Danny. And can you pull the door open?", he pointed with one full hand. Seras obliged and tugged it open with her stick arms. As they went in they were treated to only a handful of ogles, ranging from sweet aww-brother-and-sister-bonding to where-the-heck-are-their-parents. Managing to get the credit card back out Danny whispered as non-Americanly to her, "What do you want?"

A light flashed on behind Seras' face and she burst, "A double-scoop, hot fudge covered strawberry ice cream cone with little chocolate bits on top!" A pause. "Please." Danny set the credit card on the counter.

"What she said." The bepimpled girl on the other side of the counter just nodded, swiped the card and produced the much-pomped ice cream cone. Seras took the treat lovingly and began to feast immediately, scarcely looking up as Danny hipped the door open. They went back to Danny's bench and he waited until the chocolate topping and one of the scoops was vanquished before starting. "So. Any particular reason you were resorting to barf berries for food?" Seras snorted on her strawberry and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She studiously licked the sweet, pink blood of the treat from the cone and when she realized Danny was still waiting, gave in.

"Because." An anxious slurp.

"Because why?"

"Because because."

"I should warn you, I'm a younger brother and have long since mastered the art of annoying wordplay. Don't make me start the _I'm not touching you_ game.", he deadpanned. This hooked a snicker from the girl.

"It's because I don't want to be in Cheddar."

"…You don't want to be in a cheese?"

"No, I mean the town Cheddar."

'_Someone actually named a town Cheddar? Is there a village of Gorgonzola I don't know about?_' "Alright. So you ran away from home?" Seras squeezed the cone with a soft _crack_ that made more of the ice cream begin to ooze. The girl looked up at him fervently with her eyes huge and her lips taut.

"No! That rathole was never my home and it never will be!" Danny started backwards on his side of the bench and nearly fell off.

"Okay, okay! Not your home, I get it." Seras looked forlornly into the pink slush and began to slurp it quietly. "What did you run away from then?"

"I…I'm sorry for snapping. It's just that the orphanage,"

'_Oh crap._'

"is just all thirty-one flavors of awful and I hate it. Before mum and dad died,"

'_Oh double crap._'

"I had a home. A perfect home with all those sappy Christmases and birthdays most people only see on the telly." She smiled and the remains of the cone tilted in her hands as the ice cream slush dripped unnoticed to the pavement. "It's b-been years since that night. I-I know I should've healed at least a little by now—and I think I have, really but—but life in the orphanage is just one big screaming mess of bratty kids and pushy grown-ups and all these other little kids getting to go to new homes wh-while I sit and watch and—and I thought if I could--," she hiccupped and her eyes became glassy.

'_Oh super double crap._'

"—if I could just g-go back to the house, if I could go _home_ I'd—they'd be--!" The first tear peeked out and streaked a clean line through the pink smear on her face.

'_Oh super double mega crap, _no_, here it comes..!_' On cue Seras broke into a keening bawl as the half-eaten ice cream cone fell and sprayed itself below her dangling feet. Her hands went to her face as tears began to leak from her like water from a broken spigot. For one bizarre flash of time Danny could have sworn he saw Danielle sitting beside him, the blonde hair a silky black and the ratty clothes morphed to a blue hoodie. Then she was Seras again. But the big brother twinge had taken root in him and refused to leave until he took care of business. He touched her shoulder and she rammed her face into his chest before clinging to his back with her tiny arms. Danny folded his arms around her in return, waiting for her to turn off. One minute. Two minutes. Five minutes. A couple and their dog walked by and stared. Seven minutes. At the second before the eight minute mark she cooled down and released his ribs. "Are you okay?"

"…"

"Sorry, standard question."

Seras snuffled and used her arm to scrape away the mess on her face. "I'm close enough to okay. Sorry about your shirt." Danny looked down to see a lovely mix of strawberry ice cream, berry juice and dirt plastered over the white of his shirt.

"Eh, it's fine. Everyone needs to blow once in a while. But as for the running away thing, I'd stop now and catch a bus back to the orphanage."

"What!?"

'_Man, how do I put this?_' "You know they won't be waiting there Seras. Just think for a sec--."

"I don't want to think! I want to have my mum and dad back! I want to have my _life_ back!" Her face was even redder now, angry tears threatening to drop again.

"Seras believe me when I say I know what you mean. I'm having a crisis pretty close to yours." Before Seras could get a question in he went on, "I know how corny this sounds, but running away isn't the answer. I've tried it more than enough times to know it can end up very, _very_ nasty. There's all kinds of freaks and weirdoes out there that would do unimaginable things to you or anyone else out alone." Danny kicked last night out of his mind right when it raised its head. A vivid memory sparkled in the child's wide eyes and she visibly cringed with insight to just what kind of "unimaginable" things could be done.

"I know." Danny kept one hand on her shoulder and he turned himself to face her fully.

"Then you know you have to go back. Worst case scenario you can threaten the grown-ups with these words of savvy child wisdom: 'I will sue for child harassment.'" Seras giggled at that and smiled solemnly.

"I guess so. I brought enough pounds with me to get me back to Cheddar, but what if I _can't_ handle it? What if things just get worse?" Danny brushed this off with a wave of his hand.

"If you made it all the way out here under your own steam that just proves how much tougher you are than the brats there, right? You can take their crap." Her smile grew from a slit to a face-brightening grin.

"Thanks Danny."

"Don't mention it."

"Don't mention what?", a docile tone queried. Both Danny and Seras jerked on the bench and looked up to see a bemused Mr. Dornez standing at the edge of the bench with the bags in hand. A stammering explanation, a hanky for Seras, a detour to the bus stop and a slipped twenty pounds for Seras later Danny and Dornez were heading back to Hellsing. "…"

"…"

"…So are you going to tell Mi—_Sir _Integra about this?" Walter straightened his monocle.

"I can't see how I can keep it from her, Danny." Danny drooped in his seat. "I mean a John Bull my age splurging on ice cream? It was truly juvenile of me and I must face the consequences." Danny straightened and gaped at the butler with stars in his eyes.

"You rock so hard Walter."

He smiled serenely. "I know. When you go in take your bags straight to your room and change. I can still smell the strawberry on you." The Greyhound halted in the garage and Danny scaled the stairs. He tiptoed past Integra's office.

Through the closed doors he heard an offhand, "Change into your soldier attire."

'_Oh that's not even fair._' "Yes sir." Danny forsook the tiptoeing and tromped to his room. He dug through the bags until he had the fatiguesque outfit and boots out, tearing tags off as he went. His home clothes dropped in a pile and he slipped into the new apparel like a noodle into a garden hose. This wasn't to say he was a complete stringbean. Years of ghost hunting had given his human half a slight padding of muscle and he couldn't count as many of his ribs these days. But no matter what size he wore, at least those above size 7 ½ , hung around him like a sail. Looking at himself in the bathroom mirror he said, "Oh yeah. That's intimidating right there." As he walked out of the bathroom he was assailed with heart attack number 532 of the day. '_I should just not drink soda anymore…maybe just switch to decaf._'

Standing just outside the door was Integra with her back against the wall. She took a quick side glance at him before returning her attention to whatever void she usually stared into. "Did you really eat anything today or was the rush to breakfast just for show?"

"Yeah, I-I wolf down my food but I think my metabolism is on speed most of the time. Ha." Integra propped her glasses up higher on her nose.

"Metabolism or no, you really should gain some weight for your age. I suggest more red meat. Do you know where the firing range is?"

'_Her segue skills, they know no bounds._' "No, but I'll take a wild guess and say it's in the basement."

"You guess correct." She slipped a long column of hair off her shoulder and padded towards the door. "Follow me." Danny obliged, his mind fumbling weakly for something to talk about that would get more a monotone from her. Halfway down the first flight of stairs she cut off a rather stupid question he was about to ask—_soo, is it natural or bleached?_—with a question of her own: "Why do you cringe at it?"

"Huh?" '_Smart._' "Cringe at what?" She turned her face at an angle, her eyes seeming to look down at him despite his being half a head over her.

"…_Hell_." Danny caught her meaning too late and winced.

"Oh. That."

"Yes, that and the cigars. What all were you exposed to back home? From what I know you engaged in life-threatening fights on a near daily basis. Did nobody curse during those scuffles or were the other specters mute? Did no one smoke or murder?"

"I'm sure they did. Just not where I could see or hear it."

"Indeed. Then I should warn you about the habits of the soldiers."

"A little cuss happy?" They were now plodding down the first set of stairs into the cellar levels.

"Along with smoke, drink and trigger happy. I should warn you some of them are not unlike your run of the mill high school bullies. If you show even a hint of a squirm during their boorish acts they'll never let you be about it." They were on the second level of the basement now and from some far, muffled place Danny could hear gunfire.

"Will they stuff me in a locker or give me a swirlie?"

"A what?"

"Nevermind. Is this it?" There was a loud report from the other side of the door. "That's a yes." Integra stepped forward and opened the door on a long row of firing booths. There was a man in uniform at each booth with one giant firearm per soldier. Danny couldn't find Colin Porter's face among them. '_Day shift._' None of them turned their heads even as Integra paced towards the rack. Danny watched wide-eyed as she took a gun from the collection and stood behind the nearest soldier. She cocked the barrel so that it would aim an inch away from the man's earmuffed head. The boy gulped. "Uh, Sir Integ--?"

_BANG!_

The bullet sped past the soldier's head and hit the paper target square in the center of the black head. The soldier yelped loud enough to jolt the other men out of their trance. "The fuck was thaaaa_oh_ hello Sir Hellsing!" He and the other men stood at attention and saluted. "Permission to question Sir!"

"You may."

"If you'll pardon me, why did you need to fire an inch from my head, Sir?" He rubbed the side of his head warily. Sir Integra's smile was drenched in syrup.

"Well, clearing my throat wouldn't have done much would it? Besides, I need to keep up my aim. I'm here to introduce you to a new member of your ranks." She stepped aside to reveal an uncomfortable Danny Fenton. "This is Daniel Fenton."

"Uh, hi."

"He will be serving as a Hellsing soldier until further notice and while he is in human form you lot are to teach him the techniques you use to execute freaks. When he's not as…lively I'm certain he can teach you a few things himself. Teach him the ropes to the best of your abilities. I leave you to your business, gentlemen." Without another word she disappeared out the door. Cue chirping cricket soundtrack.

"…So you're the ghost night shift was on about?" The congregation turned to see a tall man with a faceted face and slanted eyes standing at the middle booth. He propped his gun against one broad shoulder and stepped to the front of the long room.

"That's me." Danny noticed the name on the shirt read _E. Stedler_.

"If you don't mind my saying, you look a bit too corporeal to be hooked up with Linda Blair." A light chuckle rippled through the men and Danny scratched the back of his neck. Whether the man meant it or not his words had come out sour. Not a good sign.

The teen gave an accommodating smile and shrugged. "She wasn't my type. But I am half ghost. Wanna' see?" He went invisible on the last word. There was a joint gasp from the audience as tenors and baritones began to ask each other where the blighter went. Danny stopped a foot away from Stedler before suddenly turning visible. "Boo." Stedler made a noise not unlike the ones Danny had been making for the past hours. The man jolted and nearly shot him point blank in the face. '_Ooh, smart move Danny. Smart move._' "Sorry."

"Damn right your sorry!", he wheezed shrilly with one hand on his heart.

"Bloody 'ell, Stedler, wet yourself why don't you?" Stedler threw half a glare at the other soldiers and half at Danny who took a quick step back. Intangibility or not Danny wasn't a fan of being shot at. The new man stepped forward and his expression seemed to break and thaw the ice of the situation. "I'll say this much for you Danny, far as dead people go you're an improvement on the bloodsucker downstairs."

'_Please God don't let him have heard that._' "Thanks." '_Or that. Oh, hello gun._' Danny suddenly had his thin arms full of heavy artillery which shot him back to his pirate radio escapade. It was like a Fenton gun, but heavier. And full of bullets that could make living(ish) things explode.

"Let's get started then." That soldier's name turned out to be Benjamin Barkell and Danny learned most of the other names in the unit over the day. He experienced his first recoil from a gun, the ecto energy guns didn't count, and he got a brief tutorial on the type of bullets they were using. Silver and mercury bullets washed with holy water and blessed by a Protestant priest with a small cross etched into the side of each gun. Thorough. Stedler made some gripe about what use a ghost boy could be if he had to use a gun. Danny rebutted with a green laser shooting from his finger and through the paper skull of a target. Stedler then griped about how they were wasting bullets. It went on. He didn't go ghost the entire day, even when he desperately, _desperately_ needed to when they moved on to sparring. The most he'd been able to do was duck or outrun the soldiers.

When this was reported in excruciating detail to Sir Integra, ala Stedler, she gave a noncommittal 'hmm' and let the halfa know that the next day he could feel free to 'die on them.' Hint-hint, wink-wink. So his first full day had passed with shopping, heartwarming, gunplay and hilarious hijincks. Danny went to his room with a gut full of poultry and his head full of lethargy. It all came to a crashing halt when he felt his chicken-stuffed gut clench and he opened the door. Taking up three quarters of the bed was a sprawled vampire and his spread coat. Planted in the ears of said happy dapper vampire were the earbuds of Danny Fenton's mp3. He had the audacity to flick his booted foot to the beat of whatever song was playing. Alucard glanced idly at the device in one glove while he slipped the other behind his head. "With the exception of a few pop songs (never would've have pegged you for an _a-ha_ fan) you have a wonderful selection on this toy." He swung the mp3 like a pendulum before his hectic face. "I suppose it's too much to hope that you have another one of these?"

Keeping his pupils dancing from Alucard's face to the mp3 and back again, Danny came forward. He held out his hand for the device. "Afraid so. How much power did you use?" The second his fingers came close to the plastic pendant Alucard yanked it away. The vampire plucked the earbuds out and Danny could hear Smashing Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" album drifting from the pores. Alucard deftly turned off the songs and peeked at the little screen.

"The battery icon says it's almost dead."

"I see." '_You piece of--! Son of a--! God d--! Gyuurrrarggh!_' Alucard let out a euphoric cackle. "What?" The vampire blipped off the mp3, chucked it to the boy and proceeded to crow maniacally.

"You—_ha haa_—you even censor yourself in your mind! The heck and hell thing was hilarious in and of itself, the cigar issue was even better, but this—_aha-ha_! This is gold on par with your frivolous existential denial game." Danny turned the device off and pocketed it. When he looked up the vampire was standing with one hand glued to the wall for balance. Still snickering.

"Existential what now?"

"You're a child, phantom, but you're not half the imbecile you pretend to be."

'_Sez you._' "You sweet talker, you. But what _are_ you talking about?" The laughter mellowed into nonexistence leaving only a knowing smirk in its wake. Alucard turned this on Danny with his eyes seeming to hum with their red glow.

"You succeeded in going most of a day of blocking it from your thoughts. Kudos."

'_What is he--? Oh._' "_It_ being the 'I want to go home' deal." Alucard inclined his head. Danny sighed through his nose. "True, and thank you for bringing that up right before I go to bed." The boy leaned back an inch as Alucard slithered closer. His eyes were ancient and brilliant in his sockets. "There's this great invention called personal space, dude. You should try it some time." Alucard's face didn't shift an iota.

"You've forgotten how to do it. That or the shock is trying to stamp it out. Hmm." Alucard leaned away with a mimic of satisfaction and walked back to the wall beside Danny's bed.

'…_Is this just some vampire thing I'm not supposed to comprehend?_' The teen gulped and stroked the screen of his mp3. "Am I ever going to get a straight explanation out of you?" Alucard paused half in an half out of a squirming black portal in the wall.

"Here's one for your trouble: electrocute your toy and see what happens. Sleep well." Before Danny could say another word the vampire was _phht_. The boy eyeballed that spot for a few seconds in case any abominations decided to visit. Nothing. Danny took the mp3 back out and after a moment, curiosity kicked the electricity out of his fingers and into the machine.

_Bzzztapp!_

Danny nearly dropped the thing when it sparked but he caught it by the tentacle of the earbuds. There was a momentary white glow around the thing—an undead mp3?—before it faded and Danny could see the full battery icon on the screen. '_Well. I can recharge for however long I'm here. That doesn't suck._' After double, triple and quadruple checking around his bed, he peeled away his soldier duds down to his boxers and listened to his playlist on a loop. His thumb clicked it off halfway through a Jeff Dunham skit and stuffed it under a pillow. He was out a minute later…and he dreamed.

XXX

This was like birthing a wailing, thrashing, 100 pound text baby through my brain. They won't happen all the time I'm afraid (_thank God_). But reviews…intricate, ego-inflating reviews…those might persuade me otherwise. Adieu.


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